"When the
kingfisher, flying over the sea, is exhausted, his mate places herself
beneath him and bears him along upon her stronger wings. That is what a
man wants in a wife, the halcyon. I lived with my first wife for three
years. She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year, and we used to give
nice little dinner parties in our little red brick house in Kensington.
She was a charming woman; they all said so, the barristers and their wives
who dined with us, and the literary stockbrokers, and the budding
politicians; oh, she was a charming woman. She made me go to church in a
silk hat and a frock coat, she took me to classical concerts, and she was
very fond of lectures on Sunday afternoon; and she sat down to breakfast
every morning at eight-thirty, and if I was late breakfast was cold; and
she read the right books, admired the right pictures, and adored the right
music. My God, how that woman bored me! She is charming still, and she
lives in the little red brick house in Kensington, with Morris papers and
Whistler's etchings on the walls, and gives the same nice little dinner
parties, with veal creams and ices from Gunter's, as she did twenty years
ago."
Philip did not ask by what means the ill-matched couple had separated, but
Athelny told him.
"Betty's not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn't divorce me.
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